Abstract
Body size variation can have important evolutionary, physiological, functional, and ecological consequences. Body mass is a widely used size measure across different taxonomic groups, but it combines skeletal size with nutritional and reproductive status. In bats, forearm length is commonly used as a measure of skeletal size. However, body mass and forearm length are poorly correlated within species. This suggests that the two size variables are measuring different biological attributes. Here, we tested this hypothesis by evaluating the association between body mass, forearm length, and fitness components (survival and reproduction), derived from mark-recapture models, as well as their trends over a nine-year period in a population of short-tailed bats (Carollia perspicillata). Results showed a direct relationship between body mass, survival, and reproduction, and an inverse relationship between forearm length, survival, and reproduction. Different temporal trends in the size variables were observed according to sex and age. Males showed a trend of increasing average mass over the years. In adults, average forearm length decreased over the years, whereas juveniles showed an increasing trend. Our results showed that body mass and forearm length have distinct evolutionary dynamics and proximal mechanisms of change. Forearm length is a measure of wing size and should not be used as a proxy for body size in intraspecific studies.
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Data availability
All data and R scripts are available on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10601060).
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank W. Costa-Jr and G. L. de Carvalho (RBU administrators) and ICMBio staff for providing support. We also thank R. B. Lyra, K. Urbanowski, L. B. Mayer, J. M. Bubadué, and N. B. Melo for help with the field work. Previous versions of this manuscript were improved by the comments of E. Bernard and A. P. Cruz-Neto.
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This work was supported by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq), Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) - Finance Code 001, and Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense.
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L.R.M., B. M., and M.R.N. designed the research. All authors participated in all aspects of fieldwork and data collection. B.M. and L.R.M analysed the data and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to the writing of the final version.
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Mellado, B., de Oliveira Carneiro, L., Nogueira, M.R. et al. Not all size measures are created equal: different body size proxies are not equivalent fitness predictors in the bat Carollia perspicillata. J Mammal Evol 31, 9 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-024-09702-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10914-024-09702-x